Owl Painting from Rootwire/AO | Gratifly 2013 Live Set | MG on Google Glass at Burning Man

"The next time you get really angry about the evils of the system, notice how good it feels, and understand how that feeling takes power away from the better angels of your nature and turns it over to something that longs for destruction, conflict and brutality as goods unto themselves. Understand that the best practice is the cultivation of your own consciousness."

– KMO

In this issue, I'm proud to share some of my finest work to date – new art, music, and ideas! An illustration from my imaginary field guide to hyperspace creatures; my first-ever full concert recording, from Gratifly Festival; and the talk I gave at Burning Man on the social and philosophical implications of wearable computing.

While I continue my search for an appropriate booking agent and record label, I'm still doing the occasional gig and soaking up inspiration for the next round of cool offerings.  As always, your comments and suggestions are encouraged.  Enjoy, and thank you for your support!

Inner Light

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20"x30" – oil & acrylic paint markers on canvas – painted live at:

• Little Tree Art Studios - 2013 08 08 (Atlanta, GA) for Kynara, Feverkin, The Fresh French

• Rootwire Music & Arts Festival 2013 08 15 - 18 for Papadosio Live PA, Evan Marc, Aligning Minds, Open Source, Hundred Waters, Dirtwire, ESKMO, The Malah, Bluetech, Welder

• Be:Tribe Gathering - 2013 09 12 (Dallas, TX) for Kaminanda, The Nadis Warriors

• Art Outside Festival 2013 10 20, 21 for Rena Jones, Bluetech, Psymbionic, Nit Grit, Happy Happy James, Brede, Somatoast, Bird of Prey, Kyle Hollingsworth Band, ISHI, The Nadis Warriors

My latest live painting is the consequence of a collision between hyperspace and the owl fetish that's haunted me since moving to Austin two years ago. Shout out to Augustin Lesage and Louis Wain, two men who went famously mad and became awesome (entirely sober) psychedelic artists.  This piece is inspired by their work,  as well as a few positively strange experiences that got me wondering about the origins of owl medicine.  Basically:  do hyperdimensional intelligences appear to us in the form of cartoon animals, as an interface that helps manage the overwhelming ineffability of higher realms?  Do our folk stories and animal archetypes point to a totally nuts "self-transforming" world beyond mundane appearances?  My vote is yes.

I had this piece scanned, so if you'd like a full-size stretched canvas giclee (practically indistinguishable from the original, and maybe even a little more durable) – email me for pricing.

Click below for a detailed look at the process:

Avalon Through Glass:

Live at Gratifly Music & Arts Festival

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A record of the most ambitious, visionary concert I have ever performed.  Listen to this loud on big speakers...preferably during a storm.

Improvised on guitar, voice, and effects at Gratifly Music & Arts Festival on the LostInSound.org Synergy Stage, 26 July 2013 (Carl Jung & Aldous Huxley's birthday). This chronicles, in its entirety, the first concert ever streamed through Google Glass over video chat and projected back on stage, creating an artist-audience feedback loop!

Lyrics are from poems turned into song on the spot. All instrumental sounds are from live guitar and hardware processing (no computers). The Glass was ceremonially consecrated that evening to ensure its use as an instrument of good.

Special thanks to my Indiegogo campaign supporters:
Adam Scott Miller, Alan Wood, Allan Badiner, Asa Henderson, Austin W. Lucas, Ben Gordon, Billy Mays III, Brett Bonnist, Brett Thomas, Brian Hampton, Candy Hogrefe, Carl Jacobson, Chelsea Schulz, Christopher Ergen, Cody Westerlund, Connor Wood, Dan Sockrider, David Hyde, David Swirsky, Diana Martinez, Douglas Tataryn, Eliza R. Williams, Erin O'Brien, Evan Snyder, George Crosby, Harlan Emil Gruber, Isabella Melo, Jason White, Jessica Nielson, Joey Walter, John Harrison, Jonathan Zap, Jordan Allen, Jordan Sadler, Joseph Chang, Josh Audiss, Kevin Seagraves, Kristen Wood, Kylie stein, Lawrence Wang, Lindsey Wilkinson, Marcello Herreshoff, Marya Stark, Michael William Benton, Molly Gardner, Nick Kampe, Patrick Gomez, Phil Osophical, Philip Heath, Richard Guerra, Robin Arnott, Ryan Meredith, Sandra Lam, Sebastian Siegel, Simon Haiduk, Stephen C. Drena, Steven Sampson, Sven Jorgensen, Tara Fahmie, Taylor Steelman, Thomas Stokes, Tristan Gulliford, Tyler Kimbro, Ursula Anderson, Vance Feldman
...we did it!

Dedicated to Donna Merrill.

Life In The Glass Age:

Michael Garfield at Palenque Norte 2013

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"Glass’s success isn’t predicated on how it looks. Rather, it’s all about how Glass invites us to lookand how it makes us more aware of when and where we’re looking. The ecstasy-inducing capacity of Google Glass lies in the pleasure of watching: watching others, being watched, and watching for the meaning of the technocultural moment heralded by Google’s evocative new product. Glass promises a new way to get out of our own bodies and to enter those of others. And we like it."

– John Garrison, "How Glass Magnifies Desire"

My provocative talk on Google Glass as the emblem of a new era – in which democratized surveillance and the "individual" self have become the medium of avant social art, and we have a responsibility to reprogram them for the greater good of an emerging planetary consciousness.  Recorded for the Psychedelic Salon podcast, as part of the Palenque Norte lecture series at Burning Man, 30 August 2013.

If this talk inspires you and you'd like to stay abreast of my tech news and commentary, join the conversation about art, technology, and consciousness in my new facebook group, Life in the Glass Age.

The Evolution of Surveillance Part 2, Looper's Night Archive, Skateboard Preorders, Perspectives on a New Age, Questions from a Grade-School Art Class, Another Hat

"Tribalism is very hard to reconcile with progressive visions of a world of equality, fairness, and understanding. The moment you being to see other human beings as being somehow outside your perimeter, you can believe they’re less than human – objects to use or, worse, destroy."

– Connor Wood

"To fight the empire is to be infected by its derangement. Whoever defeats part of the empire becomes the empire; it proliferates like a virus…thereby it becomes its enemies."

– Philip K. Dick, Valis

For the first time in six years, I have no upcoming gigs on my calendar.  Art Outside was a profound, beautiful farewell to my festival season and a lovely port to kiss goodbye as I set out to sea on a frightening new adventure in self-discovery, study, writing, studio work, and wide-eyed travel.

I don't know who I am or what I am becoming, but I promise I'll have even more time to help you even more directly than I did before.

• If you'd like Skype/Hangout lessons in guitar, songwriting, live art, public speaking, or any of the other things I do, email me and I'll be happy to help.

• If you'd like to scoop a superb cut-rate deal on any of my available original live paintings, now is your chance to hit me up with an offer I can't refuse.  Split payments and offensively low bids encouraged.

• If you'd like new custom work, you know how to get ahold of me with your budget and ideas...

• And if you want to book me for music, art, or speaking, it would be my pleasure to fly out there.

For now, I'm off to the cave.  See you with more inspiring goodies in two weeks.  Enjoy, and be well!

View From The Horizon: Perspectives On A New Age

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Afraid of the machines? Worried the universe is running down into chaos? Afraid of a surveillance state, or ecstatic that we're nearing The Ascension? (Choose your flavor.) Well, cut it out. The more things change, the more they stay the same. This talk should help you keep a healthy realist optimism for, oh, another twenty years or so...

Michael Garfield at Burning Man's Center Camp Café (in a talk originally titled "These Are The Good Old Days: Reverse Nostalgia From A Citizen Of The Future") explores the basic dyads of life and death, past and future, Heaven & Hell, self & other – and explains how to move beyond them for Better Living in the 21st Century.

Note: Due to dust in the equipment, this recording was cut short right before the Q & A. Typical Burning Man technical difficulties. Apologies!

The Evolution of Surveillance, Part 2: Red Queens & Evil Eyes

The next installment of my serial essay on cyborg spirituality and evolutionary conflict is now online at Reality Sandwich:

With the evolution of the eye came predation, and with predation came herd behaviors...So began an evolutionary arms race that modern biologists describe with the Red Queen Hypothesis, named for the way that teeth and armor, poisons and immunities, continue to leapfrog each other on a treadmill as generations come and go. Police call it 'escalation.' The logic is simple: over numberless generations, offensive and defensive strategies sharpen each other, drawing both into remarkable intricacy and precisely interlocking interdependence...  (Read more.)

Last chance to preorder my skateboard!

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The boards are almost in – now is your last chance to preorder my limited series Creation Skateboards deck artist-direct!  $85 includes the board (signed, if you like), a sticker of the painting, a download of my forthcoming album, and shipping anywhere in the US.

To order, use paypal to send money to my  email with a note including your shipping address.  That's it!  Your board will be at your doorstep ready to shred or hang on the wall in a few short weeks.

Looper's Night Collaboration Jam Archive!

Free (Pay-What-You-Like) Downloads

Over the last eight months I have held about a dozen experiments in musical collaboration between people who have never jammed before, all of us running through my multi-channel loop station so I can remix everyone's live performances on the fly.  Half DJ, half conductor, all terror!  What started as a residency at Flipnotics Coffeehouse in Austin grew wings and came with me on tour this summer for awesomely fun experiences at Rootwire Festival and Burning Man, among others.

Now my favorite Looper's Night performances are free for your enjoyment.  Caution: we get weird.

My Answers To Questions from a Grade-School Art Class

Tia Parr & Cory Nevins collected these questions from their art class with The Homegrown Kids Of Conway, Arkansas, Fall 2013. Here's an excerpt:

Q: Where do you think the future of art is going, and as an artist, do you feel that you are co-creator in the evolution of art?

A: I think we're creating more and more media and that art is more popularly understood as being creative in any medium. So there will be gene-poets who make new kinds of animals and plants, there will be professional dreamers who share their recorded imaginations, there will be mind sculptors who connect people's experiences in novel ways, there will be artistic explorations in robotics (musical sculptures that play along with you like living bandmates, and buildings that respond to your mood), there will be chefs who make impossible foods out of 3D printers...and there will STILL be painters, and blues guitarists, and standup comedians, and all of the other art forms. We will continue finding new ways to express ourselves and share those ideas. (Read more.)

Aaaand, More Hats

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My last bass drop hat ever.  I'm still totally open to other designs – power animals?  magical sigils?  sacred geometries? – if you'd like something with personal flair.  Let's make something that is uniquely YOURS.  You'll still be proud to wear it in a decade...

What We Can Learn From Mass Extinctions | Metaphors & Meta-organisms | The Science of Transformation | Back in the Hat Game

"You don't own your reputation. Most people think they do, but the reality is different. Your reputation is the accumulation of what other people think about what they think you have done or said. In other words, your reputation consists of other people's projections. You don't own that and you don't control it. You can influence it, but only up to a point."

– Ken McLeod

“If you don't have enemies, you don't have character.”

– Paul Newman

Life in the Glass Age: Technology, Art, & Consciousness

Thank you to everyone who supported my recent crowdfunding campaign!  We managed to raise enough to keep me warm and fed this winter as I get cracking on the backbone of my new book and continue to freely share more videos and writing through and about Google Glass (and living through intense technological change in general).

I've started a new FB group – "Life in the Glass Age: Technology, Art, & Consciousness" – to keep the conversation going.  Please join us there with your questions, comments, and news items.

If you'd still like to donate but missed the window for contributing to my Indiegogo campaign, don't sweat it - you can make a paypal donation, and just let me know in the "note" section which of the perks from my campaign you'd like as a gesture of my appreciation for your support.

And now for some big new stuff:

Organizing my thoughts for The Long-Delayed Book!

From catastrophe, new life.  Luckily I've been a compulsive note-taker for the last eight years...

Back in the Hat Game

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My summer tour is over and I'm ready again for cozy months of painting while I listen to inspiring podcasts.  If you'd like a custom hat, feel free to drop me a line.  Orders start at $150 (including the hat) and I am not doing any more Bassnectar or Pretty Lights designs.  (Sorry, kids, but I'd rather not capitalize on someone else's stardom – and you'll thank me when you can still wear the hat in ten years.)

What We Can Learn From Mass Extinctions

Read at BigThink.com

Since “no problem can be solved from the level of thinking that created it,” let’s look at our ecological crisis from the only angle that will help us solve it: not as an invasive species separate from the rest of the biosphere and “killing the planet,” but as something the Earth is doing, part of the story of life, participants in the distributed intelligence of the evolutionary process and thus performing a valuable function we cannot fully understand. This is the sixth mass extinction, so let’s look at how we (identifying with life as a whole, since we have never been completely removed from the layer of life that covers this planet) made it through a comparable crisis before.  (Read more...)

Find hope for the future by studying the past.

Or if you're more of a video person, here is the article above in improvised rant form.  Not as articulate, perhaps, but you can read along to the transcript and listen to the stirring musical accompaniment!

Meta-phors & -organisms, my talk from Rootwire 2013

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"Metaphorical thinking — our instinct not just for describing but for comprehending one thing in terms of another, for equating I with an other — shapes our view of the world, and is essential to how we communicate, learn, discover, and invent. Metaphor is a way of thought long before it is a way with words."

– James Geary

My talk from Rootwire Music and Arts Festival 2013 on how to use a suite of new metaphors to navigate the shifting landscape of 21st Century self and society. Topics include:

• What "The Great Oxygenation Event" of 2.5 billion years ago has in common with our current industrial eco-catastrophe, and how it might inform a solution;
• Why the universe is equally well-described as ramping "up" and "down" – and how these forces merge in the ever-morphing now;
• How every act of communication is both a manifestation of mind and an attempt to promote a specific perspective;
• How experiencing the Earth as a superorganism informs a more responsible theory of economics;
• And more ideas from the fractal horizons of human experience...

Mark Heley at Fractal Planet: The Science of Transformation

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Mark Heley, author of The Everything Guide to 2012, speaks on taking a galactic perspective at Fractal Planet, Burning Man, 29 August 2013.  I sit in, along with my friends Mitch Mignano and Jonathan Zap, on the conversation.  We discuss the cosmic timing of mass extinctions, our need to understand the dynamic environment of interstellar space, and how we are learning to pilot "Spaceship Earth" into a new and stranger century...